How to remove grease stains from paper

Grease stains often appear on a vari­ety of sur­faces, includ­ing paper where small chil­dren live. Rest­less pranksters are able to leave traces of their dirty pens on the wall­pa­per, books and note­books of old­er broth­ers and sis­ters, even on impor­tant parental doc­u­ments. But adults can also put a greasy spot, for exam­ple, if a per­son has a snack at work and stud­ies reports at the same time, this hap­pens quite often. The good thing is that there are many ways to solve the prob­lem. To learn how to remove such con­t­a­m­i­nants from paper, read the arti­cle by Exper­tol­ogy spe­cial­ists.

Tips to help remove grease stains from paper effectively and safely

It is nec­es­sary to deal with the elim­i­na­tion of oily traces, tak­ing into account some fac­tors:

1. 
   Than a “fresh” stain, the eas­i­er it will be to remove it using gen­tle means and meth­ods. There­fore, the pro­ce­dure should be car­ried out imme­di­ate­ly after the dis­cov­ery of a prob­lem, and not post­poned until lat­er. If you notice the stain not imme­di­ate­ly, but after some time has passed, this is also no rea­son to despair, because there are ways to remove old con­t­a­m­i­nants.

2. 
   Col­or, weight, paper type. If the stain is on white card­board or oth­er white heavy mate­r­i­al, you can use any of the meth­ods list­ed in this arti­cle to remove it. In oth­er cas­es, the sit­u­a­tion becomes more com­pli­cat­ed. If thin, col­ored paper, with print­ed or writ­ten text, draw­ings, seals has been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, you should act as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble. Do not use aggres­sive sub­stances that can dam­age the sur­face struc­ture, paper fibers, remove the col­or­ing pig­ment along with the oil, and also leave a hole or area on the sur­face that will be dis­col­ored.

3. 
   Doc­u­ment Impor­tancewith a greasy stain. Before tak­ing any action to clean up con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, con­sid­er how much dam­age will be done if the doc­u­ment is dam­aged. If you can’t take risks, for exam­ple, when it comes to impor­tant agree­ments, con­tracts, pass­ports, etc., it’s bet­ter to con­tact a spe­cial­ist (pho­to lab, print­ing house, dry clean­er) or try to copy, restore the doc­u­ment.

4. 
   Fea­tures of paper han­dling. It must be remem­bered that this mate­r­i­al does not tol­er­ate strong mechan­i­cal stress, includ­ing hard fric­tion, as well as strong wet­ting.

And of course, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand that one should act as del­i­cate­ly and care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, first test­ing the cho­sen method and means on a small area of ​​the sur­face, if pos­si­ble.

How to remove fresh grease stains from paper — emergency measures

The basic prin­ci­ple on which the method of remov­ing fresh grease stains from paper is based is that some­thing must absorb the grease. This “some­thing” can be Extra class salt, pow­dered white chalk, flour. The pro­ce­dure for sav­ing paper is sim­ple, you need to have kitchen paper tow­els, paper nap­kins or, in extreme cas­es, toi­let paper with you. Sequenc­ing:

1. Pour salt, chalk on a greasy stain in a thick lay­er, wait 5 min­utes until the absorbent absorbs the max­i­mum amount of oil.
2. Blot the stain with a paper tow­el, press­ing it very firm­ly against the paper.
3. Sprin­kle the greasy trace again with the select­ed sub­stance, cov­er with a nap­kin, iron with a heat­ed iron.
4. If a greasy trace appears on the nap­kin, it must be changed to a new one so that it absorbs as much fat as pos­si­ble. You should also add new salt or chalk.
5. The iron­ing pro­ce­dure is car­ried out sev­er­al times, turn­ing the sheet over with the front and back sides.

Some house­wives advise using a slight­ly mod­i­fied method for remov­ing oily con­t­a­m­i­nants. You need to take all the same soda or chalk, a few paper nap­kins fold­ed in half, a few heavy books or any oth­er heavy object with a flat sur­face. We put a nap­kin, pour a thin lay­er of chalk / salt on it, put paper with a stain, sprin­kle chalk or salt on top again, cov­er with a sec­ond nap­kin, put oppres­sion on top.

Starch mixed with water will also help remove grease stains from paper. To obtain a work­ing mix­ture, take a few table­spoons of starch and the same amount of plain water. It is nec­es­sary to obtain a mix­ture that is sim­i­lar in con­sis­ten­cy to gru­el. Spread it in a thin lay­er over the sur­face of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, wait until it dries com­plete­ly, clean it off the paper with a soft cloth.

Anoth­er way to remove greasy stains from paper is to use the pulp of fresh brown bread. Mash the pulp in your hands, form a ball out of it, wipe the sur­face with it until the desired result is obtained. Although this method is rather dubi­ous, the result depends on the type of bread. Some users report that they have new oily spots on the paper after such a pro­ce­dure.

If you have white clay, which is used in cos­met­ics for oily skin, you can try it as an absorbent. To do this, dilute 2 table­spoons of the sub­stance with 1 table­spoon of water, mix, let stand for a while. Apply the mix­ture to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area, leave to dry com­plete­ly (20–30 min­utes). Then clean off the clay with a rag.

How to remove old grease stains from paper — we use solvents

It should imme­di­ate­ly be clar­i­fied that these meth­ods are suit­able for “resus­ci­ta­tion” only of thick white paper, with­out inscrip­tions, draw­ings, seals. Since stub­born and dried stains can­not be removed with absorbent sub­stances, you will have to use prod­ucts that can dis­solve grease, and with it dyes, inks, etc.

Hydrogen peroxide

This sub­stance has excel­lent bright­en­ing and degreas­ing prop­er­ties. There­fore, it is often used to remove greasy stains, includ­ing from paper, this is done as fol­lows:

1. We take a piece of cot­ton wool, a cot­ton pad or a clean white cot­ton cloth, moist­en it a lit­tle with per­ox­ide.
2. We care­ful­ly blot the stain with a disk, mak­ing sev­er­al touch­es to the sheet, but not allow­ing it to become very wet.
3. We put the soiled doc­u­ment between two sheets of clean white paper, iron it with a warm (not hot) iron.

After that, the paper can be put under a book press or oth­er oppres­sion for sev­er­al days so that the treat­ed area does not bub­ble up.

Purified gasoline “Galosha”

Ordi­nary gaso­line will also help remove grease stains from paper, but after using this prod­uct, stains from it will remain on the sheet. If you use refined gaso­line, for exam­ple, a drug sold under the trade name “Kalosha” or “Galosha”. After its appli­ca­tion, there should be no traces, streaks, stains, it quick­ly evap­o­rates.

Refined gaso­line can be used in its pure form. To do this, soak a cot­ton pad with a small amount of the prod­uct, wipe the paper until the fat dis­solves and the stain dis­ap­pears. After that, the paper is well dried and ven­ti­lat­ed. In the future, it can not be kept near sources of fire.

Tooth powder and refined gasoline

The gaso­line in the mix­ture should degrease the sur­face, the tooth­pow­der dis­solved in the liq­uid will act as a mild abra­sive, push­ing oily par­ti­cles out of the paper fibers. To pre­pare the prod­uct and process it with a dirty page, you need a shal­low glass, ceram­ic or met­al con­tain­er, a stir­ring stick, a soft brush or brush. You need to process it like this:

1. Pour 1–2 table­spoons of the pow­der into the con­tain­er, grad­u­al­ly, in small por­tions, pour gaso­line into it, stir­ring with a stick or fork. The result should be a paste with the con­sis­ten­cy of sour cream with­out lumps.
2. We are wait­ing for the com­plete dis­so­lu­tion of the pow­der so that there are no large abra­sive par­ti­cles.
3. Apply the prod­uct on the stain, leave for a day.
4. Clean off the dried mass with a soft cloth or sponge.

Keep in mind that after such pro­cess­ing, the doc­u­ment will have a pro­nounced smell of gaso­line.

Conclusion

It is quite dif­fi­cult to remove grease stains from paper, espe­cial­ly thin and of a cer­tain val­ue. The safest way is to use salt or chalk and paper tow­els, which, under the influ­ence of the low tem­per­a­ture of the sole­plate, absorb oil. Exper­i­ments with caus­tic liq­uids are quite risky. At best, they will not give the desired result, at worst, the doc­u­ment will be com­plete­ly dam­aged.